Page 77 of Love You
“I think your mother wore me out.” Nana wore a weary smile.
She was upset about Geneva and Max’s breakup, they both were. But Darcy’s mother had been gone for three days and until now Nana had been doing just fine.
“When was the last time you had a checkup?” Darcy shouldn’t have fabricated that doctor’s appointment to her mother. It was as if the universe was paying her back for being a liar.
“Not too long ago. I’m fine dear, just old and tired.”
Clearly, it was more than that. Her grandmother was having trouble breathing. “We have to go in, Nana. This isn’t normal.”
“All right but give me a few minutes to rest.” Hilde reached for the nightstand for leverage and seemed much frailer than she’d been when Darcy had left for work that morning. The fact that she wasn’t putting up a fuss about going to urgent care was also a red flag.
Seeing her like this scared Darcy to death. She wondered if she should call one of her parents. They’d never been much for helping in situations that didn’t involve them directly. But just this once she wished she had someone to turn to.
She found a pair of sneakers in Nana’s closet and socks in the drawer and sat on the floor to put them on her grandmother. Hilde was dressed but she liked to pad around the house in her slippers. Her skin felt clammy but it was a hot day.
“You want a glass of water, Nana?”
“That would be nice.” Her voice was thready and Darcy wondered whether she should call nine-one-one.
Darcy went to get her a drink and decided that she could get her grandmother to the emergency room at Sierra General faster than waiting for an ambulance to come.
“Have some of this.” She handed Nana the glass. “And then we’ll go, okay?”
Nana nodded and Darcy had a moment of panic, worried about how she’d even get her grandmother to the car. It wasn’t far and Nana wasn’t much larger than herself but she didn’t know if she had the strength to lift her if it came to that.
For a second she contemplated calling Win but she didn’t need to drag him into her problems. They were sleeping together, they weren’t a couple. And frankly she didn’t want him to think that she’d come to rely on him. It would just scare him off. Besides, she had this. She’d been taking care of herself for a long time.
She found Nana’s purse and grabbed her own. “You think you’re able to walk?”
Her grandmother gave another nod and Darcy helped her up off the bed. They walked slowly to the front door, stopping every few seconds so Hilde could rest. Darcy prayed she wasn’t making a mistake by not calling for emergency response. It was hard to know what to do in a situation like this.
They finally made it to her car and Darcy helped Nana get in the front passenger seat and buckled her in.
“How you doing, Nana?”
“I’m hanging in there.” She patted Darcy’s arm. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Darcy’s throat clogged. The truth was she didn’t know what she’d do without Nana.
“I’m planning to break some traffic laws,” she joked because it was better than being consumed by fear.
Nana forced a weak smile and Darcy drove with the wind, making it to the hospital in record time. She pulled up to the entrance and waved down a security guard.
“We need help. My grandmother’s sick and I don’t think I can get her inside by myself.” During the ride, Hilde had complained of dizziness and Darcy didn’t want to risk having her fall.
The guard returned with a wheelchair and helped Darcy transfer her grandmother and get her inside. Luckily, despite a waiting room full of sick people, they took Hilde right away. Darcy assumed it was because of her age. She went to park the car and when she returned the nurse took her to her grandmother’s room, a tiny area partitioned by curtains with an exam table, to wait for the doctor.
“You’re doing great, Nana,” she said as one of the attendants assisted Darcy in getting her grandmother into a hospital gown and onto the table.
Another nurse came in to take Hilde’s vitals, typing Nana’s symptoms into a computer screen. Darcy had never been here before but for a country hospital, Sierra General seemed to have all the modern amenities. It even had decent paintings on the wall. Landscapes of the Sierra Nevada and a couple of Ansel Adams’s John Muir Trail reproductions. She tried to get lost in them but she was too preoccupied with her grandmother’s health and all the troubling possibilities.
A woman in a white coat and a stethoscope came in the room and introduced herself as Dr. Lee. A nurse followed and the small room grew tighter. Dr. Lee asked Darcy if she would mind waiting outside while she conducted her exam and told her that someone would call her back as soon as she finished.
To keep busy, Darcy went in search of coffee and wound up in a tidy cafeteria with more Ansel Adams reproductions on the wall. She fixed her coffee the way she liked it and went back to the waiting room where she fiddled with her phone to pass the time. There wasn’t anything from Win and she wondered if he was still on his mountain biking tour, though it was getting dark outside. Again, she contemplated contacting her parents but decided to wait for Nana’s prognosis.
A short time later, she heard her phone ding with a text. Hoping it was Win, she checked the messages. Nope, not Win, Lewis.
There seems to be a glitch with the files you
